Hawaii has become a veritable battlefield for the advocates and opponents of genetically modified crops (GMO). Champions of the free market and of sound science have succeeded lately against the relentless tide of anti-science, ideology-driven environmentalism. On Kauai, a federal court has struck down a law that would have introduced new notifications and regulations concerning GMO. But that is only one skirmish in a war that will likely go on for months, and even years to come.

A ballot initiative in Maui County will be voted upon in six weeks’ time that, if passed, would place a moratorium on the growing of GMO in Maui until further assessment of GMO products and the pesticides used to produce them is conducted. In truth, it is effectively a ban, one that will damage a prosperous industry on Maui and in Hawaii. More than 700 people work full-time at Monsanto; their careers and livelihoods could be at stake thanks to the misguided activism of a group of environmentalists who choose to deal in the politics of misinformation and fear rather than in reason and science.

The initiative was the product of a campaign by the Shaka Movement, a grassroots activist organization that is seeking to scupper the GMO industry. Bruce Douglas, a co-founder of the Shaka Movement has stated that because Monsanto is the only company working with GMO in Hawaii at the moment that the initiative would not disrupt anyone who was not on Monsanto’s payroll. Yet that argument is wholly invalid. Not only is it rather glib about the 700 jobs directly funded by Monsanto that would be at risk, it also fails to grasp the damage to numerous other employers working in the Monsanto supply chain. As for harming ordinary citizens of Hawaii, the banning of GMO would certainly reduce choice and raise prices for groceries. Douglas seems to be wholly unaware of the far-reaching negative consequences his ban would unleash.

Douglas parrots the same tired lies about the health problems allegedly caused by GMO, claiming that it “creates foreign proteins that cause autoimmune and many dysfunctions in people’s bodies. They like to cite scientific studies that have been funded by the industry.”

Of course, these harms are undocumented in the scientific literature. Indeed, the broad scientific consensus continues to support the fact that GMO is not harmful to its consumers. As for the accusation of industry funding, it is patently ridiculous. Not only is the scientific community constantly looking to uncover fraudulent data, but there also is a wealth of independent studies that validate the same consensus opinion.

Perhaps realizing the scientific weakness of their case against GMO itself, the Shaka Movement and its allies have moved on to what they clearly think is firmer ground: an assault on Monsanto’s pesticides. Monsanto uses a glyphosate pesticide that is designed specifically to be non-toxic to humans and animals. Anti-GMO advocates try to claim that Monsanto and its ilk use ever-larger amounts of these pesticides, resulting in pollution of water, soil, and food supplies. Yet the actual scientific data shows a very different result. According to Academics Review, a non-partisan organization dedicated to reviewing scientific research and criticism thereof, use of glyphosate is actually “a chemical with a lower environmental impact quotient and lower toxicity.” In other words, it does the exact opposite of what the anti-GMO activists claim.

The Shaka Movement has paraded out a recent “study” by Moms Across America, an anti-GMO activist organization, which claims to have found glyphosate in nursing mothers’ milk. Their use of the study is rather funny, considering it was produced by an explicitly anti-GMO group. Surely that should make it immediately suspect according to Douglas’s own standards about industry funding. If he thinks Monsanto funding research produces inaccurate results, why does he think the results of an advocacy group for the other side would be any different?

The Moms Across America findings are also suspect because it was conducted without any sort of scientific rigor. In fact, its comically small sample size, its lack of clearly defined experimental parameters, and its generally questionable methodology all serve to reveal it as the amateurish charlatanry that it is. The results, if they are true at all, offer no conclusive evidence of harms caused by glyphosate whatsoever. In essence, the study is pointless because its methods and conclusions are all inaccurate.

The Shaka Movement’s tactics show the dishonest lengths anti-GMO activists are willing to go to in order to accomplish their goal. They do not care about science. They do not care about reality. They do not care about people. All they care about is the propagation of an ideology that has no place but on the scrapheap of history. Hopefully Maui’s voters will not be fooled by these snake-oil salesmen into throwing away one of their community’s most valuable industries.

19 Comments

The indigenous people of Hawaii are just ignorant. They are like little children who do not know any better. They should not even be asked when it comes to things like science, education, environment, medical, etc. That’s like parents asking a 4 year old for advice on which location to move to, which insurance to get and marital advice. Just leave them out of it, don’t even tell them what’s going on. It’s all this transparency that’s making things worse. It would be different if the natives could understand what they’re being told, but they don’t.

The Akaka Bill created these protests by focusing on trying to make Hawaiians happy by giving them similar Native American Indian rights to appease the loud voices claiming illegal and unlawful overthrow. The Queen agreed to the abdication of the throne. Clinton issued an apology in 1993 about the overthrow. It was to try to appease the loud voices. Most of the federal government didn’t agree. The Hawaii State Supreme Court ruled Hawaii is a legal state of the union. These protests are the results of attempts to appease a specific class of people who are not speaking in a unified voice, are biting the hand that feeds them, and are not willing to compromise to rules and laws in the hopes that the louder they scream the more they may get appeasement again. The delay of construction showed it could work. This attitude is devastating for the proper governing and progress of Hawaii.

But note that the queen abdicated under protest, and the US Senate rejected a treaty of annexation because of a petition signed by 38,000 Hawaiians opposed to it–when the census shows only 39,000 Hawaiians were in the islands.

I’m not a sovereignty activist. But we do the TMT a disservice by refusing to recognize the injustice of what happened.

What happens when a country conquers another country? From what I understand the conquering country now rules. Back in the day that’s how King Kamehameha the Great united the islands, right? So America conquered Hawaii. End of story.

Meanwhile, B2 and B52 bombers are dropping thousands of pounds of explosives on Pohakuloa literally a few miles from the protesters camping. I would be surprised if they didn’t hear it while they were there.

“Aole TMT,” the protesters say. No Thirty Meter Telescope on the Big Island.

How did we get here? It’s not like someone crept in during the middle of the night and built a telescope without permission. The TMT survived an open, transparent seven-year approval process. The feds approved it. The state approved it. the Office of Hawaiian Affairs signed off. The public, even those opposed, had plenty of opportunity to comment.

But some people just couldn’t accept the result of that process. Next thing you know, protesters get arrested for blocking construction. Then some actor from “Game of Thrones” Instagrams “We are Mauna Kea!” scrawled across his chest. Now, suddenly everybody wants to reconsider this done deal.

It was a mistake for the governor to call for the first one-week moratorium on construction as if he had no confidence in the legitimacy of his own government and its agreements. Think of the precedent this sets. Ige’s actions, and OHA’s sudden willingness to go back on its word, are telling the entire world that no commitment made in Hawaii can be trusted.

You can tell a lot about a movement by its fellow travelers. On Tuesday, the Mauna Kea Hui boasted that it had delivered an online petition with 53,000 signatures from around the world, all opposing the TMT. Whose signatures? Well, Occupy Hilo, “in solidarity with ‘Occupy Wall Street,'” has been doing its part to get signatures.

PBN readers, you might recall the Occupy Wall Street movement. These are the folks who hate capitalism, profit, finance, private property, etc. – basically everything that you, as CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners do for a living.

But, they just might win anyway.

Because, while you go to work and try to keep the lights on, they go to the barricades. They swamp the Internet. Our Business Pulse Poll on TMT this past week is an example. It was running about 80 percent pro-TMT in its first hours, with hundreds of votes cast, when it was first seen by subscribers to our Afternoon Edition email newsletter. Now it’s up to an extraordinary 7,000-plus votes, running 64 percent opposed. Even commentators noticed that the poll was clearly hijacked by the anti-TMT crowd.

Another anecdote: I spoke at a Rotary breakfast in Honolulu this week whose members, by a show of hands, were unanimously in favor of the TMT. The business community seems to want the TMT, sees the benefits.

We see this again and again. Things the business community supports get killed when that support is invisible. Remember the Superferry, killed by reactionary environmentalists? Alexander & Baldwin’s original plans to develop Kakaako Makai, killed by surfers who didn’t want to lose parking for a favorite break? Right now, activists are trying their best to kill a dairy on Kauai. Turtle Bay Resort’s expansion – curtailed because of “No!”

A thousand people marched from office to office this week against the TMT. Did you so much as email the governor to express your support for it? Will you?

You might want to develop a new habit of speaking out. Because, PBN readers, some of you are the folks who can make big things happen. Imagine Jason Momoa, Hollywood actor, aiming his Pecs of Protest at your project – and winning. (Kudos to the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii for organizing a letter-writing campaign Wednesday in favor of the TMT.)

There’s a lot going on in the anti-TMT protest, so two other observations:

* Two years ago, 5,184 people signed up to testify on a bill to legalize gay marriage in Hawaii, many of them religious or cultural conservatives opposed to it. Over more than 55 hours, 1,000 of them spoke, many of them passionately defending their preferred, gay-marriage-free version of society and predicting social calamity should gay marriage be legalized. The Legislature legalized gay marriage anyway.

The world did not end.

The arguments advanced by Mauna Kea Hui, that the Thirty Meter Telescope desecrates a sacred place, aren’t really any different. This is a reactionary, religious opposition to a secular, civil advancement. No one seems to recognize this because the opposition isn’t from a familiar, Christian perspective. However, the Native Hawaiian opposition to the TMT is embedded in theological assertions, such as those made by Kealoha Pisciotta, chief figure in the protests: “[Mauna Kea] is home of Na Akua (Divine Deities), Na Aumakua (Divine Deities) and the meeting place of Papa (Earth Mother) and Wakea (Earth Father) who are considered the progenitor’s [sic] to the Hawaiian People.”

This is mythology; this is poetry. It’s beautiful and clearly means the world to Pisciotta and the other protesters. But it poses a question for the rest of us, for whom Papa and Wakea may as well be Zeus or Odin: Which religions get to limit what the rest of us do? Some? None? All? And why?

*”Aole, No,” is a problem for Native Hawaiians. Dustin Barca, the Kauai anti-GMO activist, said this upon his arrest while trying to stop TMT construction: “We’ve got the solution. This is what we’ve got to do for aloha aina. This is what we’ve got to do for our future, our keiki.”

I see Walter Ritte, career naysayer, on the TV news, beaming as he says, “We can stop the telescope!”

I read this from Pisciotta, about the value of astronomy, “What does it do for the people really?”

All of it said with pride and righteous outrage.

They’re acting as if the TMT was the moral equivalent of the Navy using Kahoolawe for bombing practice when, in fact, the TMT is one of those rare pinnacles of human achievement, a device for seeing the farthest reaches of space and time. It represents the best of us, what we’re capable of when nations stop trying to blow each other up and cooperate to build something new.

And to all that, the anti-TMT crowd shouts, “Aole! Desecration! No!”

No to discovery. No to the $3 million a year in economic and educational benefits the TMT will bring to Hawaii. No to international efforts finding a home in the Islands. What kind of future are the leaders of the anti-TMT movement really building for Hawaiians?

Someone needs to wake up and understand the spiritual way of sacred places .
The Mauna does not want another telescope on her.
Please be the person to stop TMT from going on the Mauna.
Please.
The indigenous people are doing what every protector would do, protect their Mauna.
They are not protestors, they are protectors.
The Mauna cannot take another telescope.
Please stop this from happening.
Your a beautiful Island, and beautiful people and culture.
Keep it that way.
Don’t be a part of the greed.
STAND UP FOR YOUR MAUNA OOOO/ To All My Relations

As a loyal subject of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, a noble citizen of the nation of Hawai’i and an ardent ali’i aloha aina (ali’i Hawaiian patriot) my ONLY interest in the upcoming American Presidential election is my concern that the next US President possesses the attributes of honor, integrity and courage enough so as to honor the Executive Agreement signed by Queen Liliuokalani and President Cleveland in which President Cleveland, in his capacity as Chief Executive and Head of State of the United States, promised to restore the Hawaiian Monarchy.

This Executive Agreement is a perpetual agreement that has been the solemn responsibility of every successive US President since President Cleveland to honor and to carry out.
Once the Executive Agreement is carried out and the Hawaiian Monarchy is restored as the lawful and rightful government of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, the US President, using his executive powers as the Chief Executive of the United States and his military command powers as the Commander-in-Chief of the US Military can order all US federal agencies, military forces and undocumented US settlers to leave the Hawaiian Islands immediately, completely, permanently and unconditionally and without the necessity of congressional oversight or approval.

How Is It Possible That After Overwhelming Opposition Last Summer, The US Dept. Of Interior Is Now Proposing Rule Changes That Could Create A US Hawaiian Tribe? Whoʻs Been Feverishly Working Behind The Scenes To Make This Happen? Why Do These Rule Changes Specifically Mention Swapping Hawaiian Crown Lands?

Dude, I’m just curious what you’re doing…. you don’t look Hawaii and you sound crazy. Why are you trying to keep Hawaii in the dark ages by preventing the TMT and riling everyone up to focus on the … heh heh, “removal of the United States as an illegal occupier of the royal nation of Hawaii” hah hah you and the people you have befuddled are just silly as hell. HAwaii would never be able to take care of itself without America. Japan, China, Russia, Korea… anyone of them would just claim your island and you would be fucked. Well, not you, you would just move to Oregon or somewhere in the mainland.

TMT is the greatest thing that could ever happen to Hawaii. It’s a shame that the native think the mountain is a god and should not have technology on it. It’s also a shame that the police will not enforce the court orders to remove the protesters from blocking the roads. They should arrest each and every one of them until there are none left.

HEY TREVER YOU ARE A BITCH. PELE WILL DESTROY YOU BECAUSE OF YOUR DISHONOR AND THE TMT IS A BLITE ON HAWAII. THE MAUNA KEA MOUNTAIN IS SACRED AND YOU ARE A BITCH! TRY READING GET EDUCATION AND KNOW WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT BEFORE YOU SOUND OFF ABOUT STUFF YOU DONT NO ABOUT!
WE ARE MAUNA KEA AND WE STAND PROUD!